THE DECLINE AND FALL

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chap, rudeness and poverty of their manners. The

LXVI - students of the more perfect idioms of Rome andGreece were introduced to a new world of lightand science; to the society of the free and po-lished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar con-verse with those immortal men who spoke thesublime language of eloquence and reason, Suchan intercourse must tend to refine the taste andto elevate the genius of the moderns; and yet,from the first experiments, it might appear thatthe study of the ancients had given fetters, ratherthan wings, to the human mind. However laud-able, the spirit of imitation is of a servile cast;and the first disciples of the Greeks and Romanswere a colony of strangers in the midst of theirage and country. The minute and laborious di-ligence which explored the antiquities of remotetimes might have improved or adorned the pre-sent state of society; the critic and metaphysi-cian were the slaves of Aristotle ; the poets, his-torians, and orators, were proud to repeat thethoughts and words of the Augustan age; theworks of nature were observed with the eyes ofPliny and Theophrastus ; and some pagan vo-taries professed a secret devotion to the gods ofHomer and Plato. b The Italians were op-

b I will select three singular examples of this classic enthusiasm.

1. At the synod of Florence, Gemislus Pletho said, in familiar con-versation to George of Trebizond , that in a short time mankind wouldunanimously renounce the gospel and the koran for a religion similarto that of the Gentiles (Leo Allatius , apud Fabricium, tom. x, p. 751).

2. Paul II. persecuted the Homan academy, which had been foundedby Pomponius L®tus ; and the principal members were accused ofheresy, impiety, and paganism (Tiraboschi, tom. vi, p. i, p. 81, 82).2, In the next century, some scholars and poets in France celebrated

the